Why are we traveling full-time?

Travis and I went to Costa Rica on a vacation in March of 2013. This was a dream come true for us. We actually toyed with the idea of moving to Costa Rica after college in 2008 to learn Spanish and experience a different culture. Instead, we took the path of least resistance and jumped head first in to our careers, remodeling the house we purchased two weeks before we graduated, and had a kid in 2011. Genius.

By the time we made it to Costa Rica in 2013, I had been suffering from insomnia, recurring Epstein Barr Virus infections, multiple auto-immune diseases, hormonal upheaval, near constant stomach aches that left me doubled over on the couch most of the day, debilitating allergies, and extreme fatigue for over a year.

For a detailed look at my health journey, click here.

BUT, when we arrived in Costa Rica, something completely crazy and surreal happened: most of the symptoms of disease disappeared. They just went away. The first day we arrived I didn’t mention anything to Travis because I thought I was just imagining it, but several days in to the trip I didn’t have any body pain, my stomach didn’t hurt, I was hiking, swimming, and having so much fun! I had hope. Then on the two hour drive back to the airport, the pain in my body came raging back. I burst in to tears (for anyone who doesn’t know me, I am not a crier, like seriously, water does not fall from my eyeballs). I felt confused and betrayed by my body and my mind.

Things pretty much went back to crap health-wise when we returned home. But as I worked less, we traveled more. The more we traveled (particularly to the mountains), the better I felt while we were gone. When we came home, things went back to pot – every single time. While traveling, we discovered some things: we all three love travel, the mountains, cool weather, and pretty much every mountain and water sport under the sun.

All the diet and lifestyle changes I made at home were helpful to my health, but there were two major problems that we could not overcome while living in Bryan/College Station, TX: allergies and lack of access to outdoor activities in reasonable weather.

Allergies have been a problem for me for as long as I can remember, but the stuff in the air back home was unreasonably hampering my immune system and I felt like I hit a wall with my health. By 2015 I couldn’t continue to heal while constantly battling sinus infections and living from antihistamine to antihistamine.

We spent 2 months in Lake Tahoe the summer of 2015. One morning I did a long hike by myself and I’m not sure how this came to be in my mind, but I spent the entire 4 hours devising a way for us to sell our house and travel full time. After mustering up the courage, I jokingly mentioned the idea to Travis. After several conversations, and him realizing that I was serious, deliberations began.

We sought counsel from family, friends, our church community, and marriage counselor. The idea made a lot of sense to those who knew us well and had been deeply entrenched in my health crisis. We were asked a lot of hard questions about how we would handle having community while away, how we would educate Kyle, how Kyle would have community and deep friendships, how we would continue to run our business, what we would do with our stuff – the list goes on and on. We wrestled through those questions, had more conversations, and got the blessing of the most important people to us.

After agonizing over multiple potential scenarios as far as our living arrangement was concerned, it made the most sense to sell our house, most of our belongings, cars, and hit the road.

I devoured blogs and podcasts about how other families and couples handled transitioning from a “normal” life to becoming full-time nomads. I, being the type-A that I am, made color-coded spreadsheets outlining exactly what was going to happen to all of our worldly possessions and began the process of getting our home ready for sale. We knocked out one thing at a time and the beginning of 2016 flew by. We quickly sold our house to a wonderful couple and everything fell in to place. We said goodbye to our home, community, friends, and neighbors on April 22, 2016 and are still pinching ourselves to see if this is really happening. We have no debt, no house to deal with or fix, one car, not many things or clothes, and as I write this, I’m sitting outside soaking up the view of our North Lake Tahoe rental home, the gorgeous weather, and breathing in crisp, clean air mountain air. This is amazing and I can’t believe it’s real.

There are trade-offs, obviously. We dearly miss our family, friends, and church, but have regular visitors wherever we are and try to establish a temporary community, usually with other like-minded travelers, wherever we go. Our business is sustaining us and helping us pursue some even longer term goals and my health is steadily improving, but not without setbacks. We are planning to travel as long as it works for us. I hope that’s a long time, but we’re flexible and okay with wherever the road takes us.